


Sugar

by BeaArthurPendragon



Series: I'll Light Your Way Home [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vietnam, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Artist Steve Rogers, Blanket Permission, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fluff and Smut, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Porn with Feelings, Top Steve Rogers, Topping from the Bottom, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 22:12:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: It’s been two months since a couple of lost Vietnam vets found each other one night in a Hell’s Kitchen gay bar. One sleepy Sunday morning, they start to realize that what they have could become something more. (A little interlude before the next big fic in the series, featuring sex, art, and a sweet conversation.)





	Sugar

**Author's Note:**

> So here’s a secret about me: I'm a slut for approval. When readers ask for a sequel, they get one. This is actually just a cut scene from the actual sequel that didn’t end up fitting—it’s still pretty rough and I never beta stuff, but I wanted to go ahead and get it out into the world. Hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for a lot more soon.  
> You’ll probably want to read the previous fic to understand this one.

_November 1, 1969_

Buck wakes with a start to an empty bed, heart pounding and drenched with sweat, his throat aching with the scream he’d never been able to summon in his dream. He exhales shakily and pinches the tender meat of his thigh until the pain wakes him completely, then reaches for Steve’s pillow and hugs it against his chest so he can breathe in the familiar, comforting scent of his lover’s sweat and smoke and aftershave ground deep into the worn cotton cover.

He knows he should go back to sleep—it’s not even six and he can’t have slept more than an hour or two—but he also knows it’s no use trying. It had been the kid this time, and that one was always the worst.  

He’s not surprised to find the bed empty: Steve’s an overnight security guard at the Red Hook docks, and the only way to survive the graveyard shift is to stay nocturnal all week long. When they spend the night together, as they have every Friday and Saturday night for the past nine weeks, he stays in bed till Buck falls asleep, then gets up to begin what for him is his afternoon.

Buck stretches and sits up gingerly, feeling tight muscles pop painfully across the steel screwed into his spine, and rubs the permanent knot in his left shoulder, still aching from hefting a 10-pound prosthesis around all night. Mornings like this, he knows bartending’s probably not the best job for him, but he can’t help it—he’s still a farm boy at heart and he’s never been able to shake the belief that it’s not really work if he’s not sore the next day.

An indirect light in the hallway tells him that Steve is in the small second bedroom that serves as his painting studio.

Buck finds his shorts and pads down the hall barefoot, stopping to lean against the doorway. Steve’s so lost in thought that he doesn’t hear Buck enter, and Buck stays quiet, not wanting to startle him.

He’s sitting shirtless in front of the canvas, the harsh yellow light of all the lamp’s he’s arranged to mimic sunlight throwing the long pale scar across his back carved by a North Vietnamese bullet into sharp relief. Buck loves his back, broad and strong and smooth, and still military straight even six months after he took his discharge. A cigarette burns forgotten in the ashtray to his left.

Steve’s latest subject is a harbor pilot named Melvin he likes to shoot the shit with in the mornings before he gets off his shift. Melvin’s pushing 70 but swears he’s never going to retire; Steve says he claims to know New York Bay better than he knows his own wife’s tits, and considering he’s been married to the same woman for 49 years, Buck’s not sure whether that says more about his maritime expertise or his sex life.

Steve’s got a modern, sketch-like style, but it’s a lot less haphazard than it seems—as spare as the style is, Buck actually recognized one of Steve’s neighbors one morning solely from the painting he’d done of her. He’s got no doubt that the lopsided squint and broken nose he sees in Melvin’s portrait now are true to the man himself.

Steve adds a few dashes of blue to the gray of Melvin’s coat collar, then sits back to study the painting for a moment. Apparently satisfied, he selects a fine-tipped brush and dips it into a puddle of red to sign his initials at the bottom: SGR.

“I’m going to start calling you ‘sugar,’” Buck says when he’s finished, stepping into the room and threading his arm across Steve’s chest. He holds him a little more tightly than usual, the memory of the dream still fraying the edges of his calm.

Steve gives a quiet laugh and presses his cheek against Buck’s temple. “How long have you been standing there? I didn’t hear you get up.”

“You were somewhere else, man,” Buck asks, nuzzling against the soft golden stubble of Steve’s crew cut, breathing him in deep. It takes nothing to get Buck hard in the mornings, and the touch of his lover’s skin and the scent of his neck are making quick work of it now.

“I guess,” Steve says, swiveling around to face him, taking Buck’s hand in his. “What are you doing up already?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Buck says.

Steve gives an understanding hum, and doesn’t ask for details. “Want me to put on some coffee?”

“No,” Buck says softly, tugging lightly but insistently on Steve’s hand. What he wants is Steve’s arms around him, his mouth on him. What he wants is Steve to remind him that he’s still a person.

Steve looks up at him with a curious, serious gaze for a moment, then stands and follows him into the bedroom.

“Clothes,” Buck says, nodding toward him as he starts to work his boxers off.

Steve quickly doffs his pajama pants and the minute he kicks them away, Buck pushes him against the wall, kissing him hungrily and running his hand around Steve’s side to his back, coming to rest on his ass. Buck jerks him forward so Steve can feel how hard he is, then rolls his hips a little and bites into his neck.

“Slow down, pal,” Steve murmurs, reaching down to get himself started. “Let me catch up.”

Buck bites him again, then drops to his knees and takes Steve’s cock into his mouth.

“Or we could do that,” Steve says with a breathy laugh, digging his fingers into Buck’s hair as he thickens in Buck’s mouth. “You’re pretty lively for a guy running on two hours’ sleep,” he gasps, his left knee jumping a little against Buck’s elbow.

Buck tickles him with his tongue, takes his balls into his mouth, hums a little to make Steve gasp, sucks the length of him hard until Buck just begins to taste his salt.

Then he releases him, rocks back on his heels, and looks up. Steve’s mouth is open and his breath’s gone deliciously shallow, and Buck’s heart is singing. He loves making Steve fall apart like this.

“Jesus, don’t stop there,” Steve begs, now fully erect and desperate for more. But Buck just flashes him his sauciest grin and stands.

“We’re just getting started,” he says, laying on a sloppy kiss. “You’re going to fuck my brains out.”

Steve grins against Buck’s mouth and begins to backwalk him toward the bed. They both misjudge the distance and Buck sits down hard when the mattress catches him behind the knees, but they just laugh and Buck pulls Steve down on top of him.

Steve straddles him and starts to kiss him some more, but Buck lightly slaps him away. “Less kissing, more fucking,” he breathes, hips already twitching, digging his ass against the ribbed chenille bedspread in a fruitless search for friction where he wants it most.

“Yes, sir,” Steve teases, laying one more kiss on him before rolling off to reach for the bedside drawer while Buck scoots all the way up onto the bed and spreads his knees. He plays with himself a little while Steve slicks himself up—then lets out a juddering sigh as Steve slicks him up too, warming him up a little with a playful finger, sending thick, syrupy waves of anticipatory pleasure rolling through his body.

“Oh, Jesus,” he gasps, arching his hips up insistently. “I need you to fuck me right now, Steve.”

Steve laughs a little and spreads Buck’s legs wider, kissing the inside of each knee as he eases himself in. Buck breathes through the pressure, wrapping his legs around Steve’s body, then grins when they find their fit and begins to roll his hips.

Steve moves gently at first, hovering over Buck, nuzzling his nose and flicking his tongue lightly against Buck’s lips, but Buck doesn’t want gentle. He wraps his arm around Steve’s back and bites his lower lip, hard, and sucks. Steve fucks him harder, gripping the rails of the headboard for leverage, and Buck laughs as the bed begins to bang against the wall.

“That hard enough for you?” Steve asks breathlessly.

“Not till we pound a hole in the fucking wall,” Buck growls, grabbing at Steve’s lip with his teeth again. Each thrust sends a fresh shock of pleasure through his body, Steve’s belly sliding roughly across his balls and cock as he rams himself in down to the root. Bucky reaches around and grabs Steve’s ass and tries to haul him in even deeper and Steve instinctively makes up for the lopsidedness by pulling even harder against the bedpost with the opposite hand.

Steve’s starting to fall to pieces around him, eyes half-closed, mouth half-open, exhaling half-breaths, half-moans, and Buck’s almost as close as he is—it’s too much, it’s too impossible, he’s blind and deaf with pleasure, and the world and the war and the pain are all bleeding away and all that’s left is Steve’s skin against his, Steve’s weight against his, Steve’s scent in his nose and his taste in his mouth, and swollen cataracts of ecstasy crashing all around them.

When he finally washes back ashore, Steve is curled up beside him, lightly tracing indistinct shapes across Buck’s chest and pressing soft little kisses against his temple.

Buck threads his arm beneath Steve’s neck and hooks it around so he can play with the soft crew-cut stubble at the back of his head.

“Think I might grow my hair out,” Steve says.

“What, like mine?” Buck shakes his hair against Steve’s face and laughs as he squinches his eyes shut against the tickle.

“Like a civilian’s,” Steve clarifies.

“Good.” Buck plants a kiss on Steve’s cheek before he settles back onto the pillow. “It’s high time you came home.”

Steve meets his eyes and gives him a long, steady look that Buck can’t quite parse. “I’m going to wash up,” he says after an inscrutable minute. “You need anything?”

“I’d take that coffee now.”

“You got it.” Steve kisses him on the forehead and then gets up to go to the bathroom.

Buck pulls himself up to sit against the headboard, one knee drawn up to the side, then grabs Steve’s cigarettes from the nightstand. He lights one and holds it in his mouth as he drags his fingers through his hair, trying to work out the worst of the tangles.

His hair’s still a wild mess when he notices he’s got to tip the ash off the cigarette, so he takes care of that, and he’s just taking another drag when Steve comes back into the room with his coffee, and grins.

“Don’t move,” he says, darting back into the hall.

He comes back a minute later with his sketchpad in one hand and his painting stool in the other.

“Steve,” Buck says skeptically, setting the mug on the nightstand so he can drag a corner of the chenille bedspread over his lap. “What are you doing?”

“Got inspired,” Steve says, setting the stool down at the foot of the bed. “That okay with you?”

“What the hell,” he says after a moment’s hesitation, and shrugs, acutely aware of how light his left shoulder is right now. “Make me pretty, at least?” he asks. He vamps and flips his hair over his head like Rita Hayworth—even though it’s really not long enough for that—then takes another drag off the cigarette.

“Babe, I wouldn’t change a goddamned thing about you,” Steve says seriously, propping his leg up on the footboard to support the pad. He begins to draw with quick, sure lines, and a look Buck’s never seen comes over Steve’s face—a relaxed intensity that makes Buck feel safe.  

“You’re sweet,” Buck says, tipping off the ash.

“As sugar?” Steve asks with a wink, and Buck grins.

Buck sits and smokes and lets Steve draw for more than half an hour, and just when he doesn’t think he can sit still for a moment longer, Steve grins and scribbles his initials and turns the sketchpad around so Buck can see.

Buck climbs over to the end of the bed and takes the pad from him, placing it on the bed and sitting cross-legged in front of it so he can study it.

“Damn,” he breathes.

For a sketch, it’s a shockingly accurate likeness. It’s not very detailed, but he’s still managed to capture the essence of everything in just a few, economical gestures—the chin-length tangle of Buck’s hair, the sleepy shadows beneath his eyes, the little crook in his nose and the curve of his mouth, and the way Buck tends to touch his thumb to his pinkie when he’s holding a cigarette. He captures the slight lopsidedness in his posture, the way he tends to lean a bit to the right when he doesn’t have Roz’s weight to balance him out on the left. He captures the reason for that, too—the stump is the right length and shape, the scar in the right place. The shrapnel scars on his chest and side are more of a suggestion than a reproduction, but he gets the essence of those right, too. With two quick strokes he gets Buck’s weird half-in, half-out navel right, and his legs are the right length, and even his feet, with his funny too-long middle toes, are right.

Everything about him is right.

“Is it okay?” Steve asks, so tentatively Buck wants to hug him.

“I love it,” he says, surprised to realize as he says it that it’s true. “Can I keep this?”

Steve’s face lights up. “Of course,” he says. “It’s for you.”

Buck leans over to kiss him. “Thank you,” he says. “Sugar.”

Steve laughs and scrubs the back of his head. “Gonna be strange not feeling this anymore,” he says thoughtfully, scrubbing again.

“Then why grow it out?”

“Oh,” Steve says, blushing a little. “It’s nothing.”

“Not nothing—you’re red as a beet,” Buck teases gently.

Steve sighs and takes Buck’s hand in his. “Before I got out of the Army, I hadn’t been back to Brooklyn in 15 years—after my mom died, I didn’t have any reason to. But after my discharge, I didn’t know where else to go, so I came back. First thing I did was go back to my old neighborhood and walk around, and it was just awful. I kept getting lost—some places were gone, other places weren’t where I thought they were, hell, I found out the building I grew up in had burned down a decade ago. It was all just different and wrong, as though my whole past had been a lie.”

He shrugs and shakes his head. “It was just too much, you know? Too different. It wasn’t home anymore. I think that’s why I got the night job—it made it easier to pretend I still belonged here when the sun wasn’t up.”

“There’s no rush,” Buck says.

“No,” Steve says, ducking his head for a moment, a directing a shy little smile toward his knees.  “But in a little over three months, I’ll have the option to rotate off the night shift at work, and I think I might be ready to.”

“Would be nice to see you in the daylight for a change,” Buck ventures cautiously, because this is the first time Steve’s so much as mentioned the future before, and he’s not entirely certain whether Steve meant to include him.

But Steve glances up to meet his eyes, and smiles. “I was thinking the same thing.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Update: The next fic is now posted! Woohoo! 
> 
> Comments give me life. xoxo  
> I’m sometimes on [Tumblr ](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/PendragonBea).


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